GEOtube Tower, 2009-2012

For the competition project GEOtube, Faulders designed more than a building: he proposed a device-like architecture whose definitive form is the direct result of artificially recreated natural phenomena. A proposal for the city of Dubai, GEOtube integrates the material conditions of its environment in its very materiality. The constitution of this progressive architecture extends beyond its construction, thanks to the crystallisation of salt, present in high concentration in the region’s water. The built core is combined with a network of porous tubes forming an exoskeleton and creating interstitial spaces like the conference room, somewhere between inside and outside. This envelope, through which flows the seawater that has been extracted nearby, will – thanks to a spraying system– gradually cover itself with a white membrane, constituting a new façade. Designed, and as though sedimented, by atmospheric conditions, changing over the years, the tower will continue to offer particular views and present light effects. Thom Faulders has thereby created conditions for the emergence of a truly naturalised and progressive architecture.